Maurer Family Research Update by Trudy SCHENK 30 Dec 1994
"Dear Jerry: I have been working on the Maurers more between Christmas and New Year. Sure wish the records would exist, so some connections could be made.
"After I had found the location in Germany in the State of Wuerttemberg where the Maurers came from as well as several other families who lived in New Hanover Twsp., Pennsylvania in the 1740's and 1750's, where the place Jungholzhausen was given as a place of origin for the Schweinhart family and where I then found several Maurer families, including a Johann Michael Maurer born in 1712.
"As I later met with Jerry Mower at the Family History Library realizing that Johann Michael was age 18 in 1738, placing his birth year to 1720, we decided that the 1712 born Johann Michael could not be the emigrant ancestor. The Jungholzhausen parish records give reference to Maurer families in the neighboring village of Goggenbach. This is also a small place and belongs to the parish of Eschental. After a fire in the 1740's in the Eschental church, not very many records are preserved. In a marriage record of 1735 I found Johann Philipp Maurer who is listed on the same ship Johann Michael is a passenger on.
"Due to the lack of birth records it cannot be determined if Johann Michael was a brother to Johann Philipp or a cousin and it is also not possible to place Johann Michael Maurer into a family.
"In order not to miss an opportunity of possible other records for Eschental, I called the Lutheran pastor there, just to get the confirmation that 'Yes' a fire destroyed 80% of the church records. I will write to the town house to make sure nothing else is available.
"For now I am extracting all Maurers in this small district and I find that the given name Michael is used by every family.
"Undoubtedly though we have the correct area. The surnames of the residents in this district of Wuerttemberg called Hohenlohe are 60% the same as those of New Hanover and Trappe Twsps. in Pennsylvania. Sincerely yours, Trudy Schenk"
I have spent the last month researching and studying the research of Trudy SCHENK. I guess basically we can say we have good news and bad news to report. We are very happy to have located the MAURER family in Germany.
We believe the evidence is extremely strong that the MAURER family hails from the Goggenbach area of Wuerttemberg, Germany. We definitely have located people who sailed on the ship, Charming Nancy (with Michael MAURER) in the Goggenbach / Doettingen area. These individuals show up in the Church records of Pennsylvania attending the same Lutheran churches as Michael MAURER.
The Georg Caspar MAURER family from which Trudy originally thought Michael MAURER hailed, came from Goggenbach, a neighboring village to Doettingen. This family had a Michael MAURER born in 1706. Trudy thought this was ours. I pointed out to her that my research discovered that the Michael MAURER on the Charming Nancy was 18 years old upon landing in Philadelphia in 1738. That would place his birth as 1720. IF that Michael MAURER is our Michael MAURER, and IF the age is correct, then the Michael she found in 1706 is incorrect. The Georg Caspar MAURER family has a 3 year gap in children from 1719-1721 however, and there certainly is room for another child to have been named Michael. Often a child would be renamed a name previously given to an older sibling who died. This was very common.
Also on board the same ship is a Philip MAURER and Trudy located him in the Doettingen records. It really appears that we have our Michael on the Charming Nancy. To complicate matters a bit more, there is another Michael MAURER immigrating also in 1738 on the ship, Glasgow, and his age is 24, meaning a birth of 1714. That birth record has not been located yet. You folks just have to be patient a little bit longer as we explore all clues and hope to uncover all the information we can. I would rather go slow and be more sure of the results. Trudy and I phone each other and discuss ideas and we send materials through the mails regularly.
What does all of this mean? It means that we are quite sure we have the general area of the MAURER family pinned down, but the actual Michael eludes us. Now the bad news: Since the MAURER family hails from Goggenbach, Trudy got on the phone to Germany and phoned the pastor to inquire as to the location of the Goggenbach church records. Those records exist from 1747 to present day, but the records prior to 1740 were destroyed in a fire of that year. Unfortunately for us, there doesn't appear any way to locate MAURER families of an earlier date of the Goggenbach Parish.
Well, what do we do now? I drew a circle around Goggenbach and then researched which of the villages within approximately a 10 mile area have existing Parish registers. There are about 10 villages with registers. Those registers are microfilmed and in Salt Lake. I feel we need to search these to see if any MAURER families attended those churches. This may lead us to the families we want. On the other hand, it may prove fruitless. That also is knowledge worth having.
If we remain convinced that the MAURER family hailed from Goggenbach, and we can only search from 1747 to the present, we will extract all the MAURER families in those records down to about 1884 (like we did the GEISSINGER families of Goetzis).
REPORT FROM TRUDY SCHENK ON MAURER EXTRACTIONS
Dear Jerry, These sheets pretty well take care of Eschental. I'm with you on searching all surrounding parishes for the MAURER name and extracting them.
I have worked quite a bit on Braunsbach already and have discovered some more proof on the Maurer emigration. It has to do with parish Eschental and as I find fragments in other parishes of information that lead to Eschental, I feel bad all over again that the christening records and some marriages and deaths are not available before 1770. Except those which were compiled in the family registers. These obviously are not complete.
Anyway, while searching in Braunsbach in the early 1700's, I came upon an entry in 1718 where the pastor noted "in America". The name is Johann David Schwab. As I searched out this family more I found that the mother's name is Susanna Barbara MAURER, a daughter of Hans MAURER, from Arnsdorf, parish Eschental. A brother of Susanna MAURER, Johann Thomas MAURER, also married in Braunsbach in 1690. It is very possible that the above 2 MAURERs are Uncle and Aunt to Johann Michael MAURER.
By searching all deaths and marriages including brides, I have been able to compile partial families.
The villages Arnsdorf and Herdtlinshagen in parish Eschental are close together. Both had MAURERs in the early 1700's as I have found from death records. Maybe you can put together some relations with the help of the computer.
There is one thing I have learned from doing research in this area and that is the given names Johann and Georg are interchangeable. A Johann Michael is also listed as Georg Michael.
REPORT FROM TRUDY SCHENK ON MICHAEL MAURER RESEARCH
Dear Jerry,
I have been working on your MAURER research and was ready for a report when your letter arrived.
You will see I have worked (in the neighboring villages of Doettingen) in Braunsbach, Orlach, Kirchensall and Kocherstetten, and also finished Doettingen and Geislingen.
The Maurers are mostly in Doettingen and Eschental. Only frequently is there a Maurer family in another parish and three times now these had been listed as daughters or sons of Hans Maurer from Arnsdorf, parish Eschental.
One of Hans MAURER's sons had to have been the father of Johann Michael, the emigrant. I have come across these names in other towns such as Braunsbach, and Orlach, that refer the Maurers to Arnsdorf parish in Eschental. I feel this is the ancestry of Johann Michael Maurer.
Susanna Barbara Maurer/Schwab's son, born in 1718, was listed as "in America".
As far as the other Michael who comes also in 1738, I don't know. Remember Ludwig GLOTZ, also born in 1720 in Jungholzhausen who was found with Michael MAURER in Pennsylvania? Johann Stephan GUTMANN I found born in Geislingen in 1708. He is also in Pennsylvania, Springfield and Trappe. The Sigmans are listed by Annette Burgert from nearby Baden, as well as Ferdinand DOERZBACH, all appear in the same Pennsylvania townships. Thank you for the $500 check. Sincerely yours, Trudy Schenk
COMMENTARY: As we look at the evidence we can conclude several things:
1. Michael MAURER, our ancestor lived in Pennsylvania and attended 3 different Churches there.
2. Several families also attended the same Churches as he did and are listed on the same ship in 1738 on which he immigrated.
3. Specifically Johann Stephen GUTMANN and Ludwig GLOTZ have been located in Pennsylvania with Michael MAURER and they came on the same ship to America that he came on. Their births have been located in German records.
4. We can conclude that we have located the place of origin of our immigrant ancestor, Michael MAURER based upon the facts and that he hails from the Eschental Parish records area and specifically the small villages of Goggenbach or Doettingen, which lie by each other.
5. Since early records of Goggenbach were destroyed by fire in the 1740's, we have researched the neighboring villages and have found additional MAURER families located in those villages. From this information we have been able to piece together a very likely scenario of this family. We have been able to go back and find families and genealogies in neighboring records.
I feel that we have done all that we can do in finding existing records. We are not finished with extracting all neighboring villages and we are still finding additional MAURER family members who spread out from Goggenbach. I am spending time entering these families on computer and we are getting a lot of names from the work Trudy is doing.
Trudy subsequently went to Europe in May 1996 and found that the MAURER family had only been in Goggenbach for 1 generation and hailed from the neighboring village of Jungholzhausen, for which records existed. She then was able to push the pedigree 4 generations further back in time into the 1500's.